


A Moth in the Sunlight

by Narya_Flame



Series: Nárë a Lindalë [2]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aman (Tolkien), Childhood, Gen, Mortality, POV Third Person, Years of the Trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 22:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20015608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Narya_Flame/pseuds/Narya_Flame
Summary: Tyelkormo tries to help a moth in distress.





	A Moth in the Sunlight

At midday the summer heat hung thick in the air. The light was sharp and fierce, and the colours so bright and deep it made one's eyes ache. Sprawled on the pavilion floor, eyelids screwed firmly shut, Tyelkormo found himself longing for mountains – for a fresh green wind that stirred the trees, a whispered promise of rain, and for the tang of ice that laced the chattering streams.

Nelyo made the mountains sound so wonderful. Tyelkormo rolled onto his belly and blew upwards. His silver hair, damp and heavy with sweat, barely moved. Things were a little better here, at the summer house, than they had been in Tirion, where the heat and light shrieked in the streets and bounced back from the smooth white stone. Here, when the air moved, at least he could smell the sea. Yet it still rankled that Nelyo, Makalaurë and Aranwë were allowed to roam and explore almost as they pleased, while he, Tyelkormo, was not. Once he had tried to persuade Findekáno that they should steal a pair of horses and follow the older ones, but his cousin had balked, much to his surprise – he knew his cousin cared more for books than the call of the wild, but he was amazed that Káno had refused a chance to go trailing after Nelyo...

_I'll show them. One day, when I'm older, I'll go further than any of them. I'll be the fastest, and the strongest, and the best hunter..._

His reverie was interrupted by a frenzied fluttering sound – like a scrap of silk, caught in a door frame and flapping in the breeze. He sat up and looked around. There, in the corner. A moth lay struggling on its back, its soft wings beating against the rust-red of the tiles.

Tyelkormo crept closer and extended one gentle finger.

“There,” he murmured, carefully righting the moth and flattening himself down to observe it. “That's better. You'll be alright now.”

The moth spread its wings, extending and rotating them as though testing their strength. Sunlight struck them, and filtered through them in a golden haze. They were beautifully, fascinatingly fragile – like the gauze of one of Indis's fans, teased into an elegant curved triangle. Its body was covered in dense white fur; dark, delicate, fringed antennae waved idly above sharp black eyes; velveteen legs tapped experimentally against the floor. Suddenly it took flight, aiming for the wall – but it failed to grip, and fell back onto the tiles, where it skittered in misshapen circles as though drunk or concussed.

Frowning, Tyelkormo reached out with his mind, the way he sometimes did at the stable to understand why a horse was distressed. He slid past the layers of sound from outside – the hum of bees, the cheerful spatter of fountains – and found the thin singing thread that was the moth. Of course, it felt very different from a horse. It was simpler and weaker, like water beaded on a strand of web. Light gleamed through it; he felt it in his blood, and through his heart – but the droplet was shivering, wavering, barely clinging on.

 _You're dying._ Tyelkormo felt no horror, or pity, only a sense of hazy strangeness. It seemed wrong, somehow, that the bright simplicity of the moth should not last forever. He thought about ending it quickly – a swift swat, a halt to the suffering – but he knew from his studies that moths were short-lived. Even a heartbeat was precious. And how the creature fought! It had ceased its flittering, its wingbeats now awkward and stiff; it lay on its back once more, legs waving, wrestling a foe it could not defeat.

He could have broken the contact, he realised later, but at the time the thought did not occur. The sunlight shifted. He watched and felt as the moth's legs slowed, as the water-drop grew heavy and swayed – and fell, and the creature stilled. The connection snapped. The thread was cut.

_You were not meant to survive._

Tyelkormo got to his feet. His limbs felt heavy and half-asleep. Heat and colour rolled in from the garden. That, he told himself, was what made his eyes sting. The moth's body looked soft, like a puppy's fur, but he could not bring himself to touch it – not even to lift it out of the shadows. It seemed wrong, somehow, to leave it lying there in the dark, but he felt giddy and sick at the idea of disturbing its corpse.

He walked out of the pavilion, blinking back tears of shame.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a few weeks ago, on holiday, because the shower block at the campsite I was staying at was invariably covered in dying moths each morning.
> 
> While typing it up and editing, I did a little research on the lifecycle of moths, and stumbled across the essay 'The Death of the Moth' by Virginia Woolf. I don't actually recall ever seeing it before, though I did study Woolf a little at university, and I've read a fair bit of her work. The structure and imagery, though, were startlingly similar to (if significantly better than) my own. It's possible that I did read it, at some point, and it's lurked in my subconscious until now, waiting to find its way back to the surface.


End file.
